No-Win Scenarios
by Fflur Cadwgawn
Summary: Jim Kirk doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. When a second attempt at the Kobayashi Maru nearly claims his life, he spends the entirety of the Alpha Base training simulation trying to come to terms with what happened. Can he find a way to beat the Kobayashi Maru before more cadets are hurt?
1. Chapter 1

No-Win Scenarios

A/N: I own nothing. The inspiration for this story was _The Kobayashi Maru_, by Julia Ecklar, which is # 47 on the Star Trek Original Series novels list. I'm just playing in Ms. Ecklar's world for this, modernizing it to fit the 2009 version. What she mentioned by way of this was a reprimand by a Starfleet Commodore of Chekov's actions during a similar scenario. All I can say is…..RAFO (read and find out) for Ecklar's version of events.

Also, in one of the early Star Trek Original Series books, there is a scene where the food replicator acts up. I took some liberties with that for a scene in this story—mostly to show that even in the 23rd century, technology still acts up!

* * *

Chapter 1

James Tiberius Kirk groaned as the klaxon sounded and Captain Pike's voice echoed through the Bloc K quarters and the rest of the Academy grounds. At 0300 hours, he'd barely had two hours' sleep. Bones would have his hide if he saw Jim without sleep another morning in a row.

The Saurian Brandy was pounding in his temples. Maybe going to that hole-in-the-wall pub outside the Academy grounds last night was a bad idea. Jim sat up and groped blindly for his regulation black underclothes, squeezing his eyes shut against the pounding headache.

"_All Bloc K third-year cadets report to flight hangar one. Repeat, all Bloc K third-year cadets to flight hangar one,_" Captain Pike said.

Jim groaned again, clenching his head with both hands, willing the pounding to stop. He _liked _going to the pubs on Friday nights (in fact, if he hadn't developed that habit back in Riverside, Pike never would have met him and convinced him to enlist). How was he supposed to know that Starfleet Academy would spring a training simulation on the Bloc K third-year cadets bright and early on a Saturday morning?

But, hangover or no, he needed to get to the flight hangar. He reached to the bottom of his bed, where he'd set his cadet uniform the evening before, recognizing that the pub hop he was planning on would likely last into the wee hours of the morning. Jim winced, dropping his regulation reds as the headache intensified, and he gripped his head again. Unfortunately, the pressure of his hands wasn't keeping it at bay like it normally would have.

And yet, Jim didn't regret the Saurian Brandy, despite the discomfort he was in now. On Tuesday, he had spectacularly failed the _Kobayashi Maru_ simulation for a second time. He remembered the pilot's console bursting into flame with an explosion of heat that had given even him, in his position in the captain's chair, extensive second- and third-degree burns that had landed him in Starfleet Medical Hospital for three days so the doctors could regrow his skin—his uniform had melted to him. He remembered trying to think through that pain and watching how the Klingon warbird had systematically targeted each of the _Potemkin's_ weapons arrays on the bridge, and then how the Klingon commander had mocked him for dying without honor, and allowing his crew to die needlessly, and how all that meant that the son of George Kirk was the scum of the very soil the Klingons walked…

The cadet acting as his pilot that day was still in Starfleet Medical. Jim _knew_ Gary Mitchell, was friendly with him enough to enjoy the company during last-minute study sessions when Bones wasn't off-duty. Mitchell didn't deserve that kind of fate.

Was he really half mad, as Bones insisted, to try to beat the sim? If he had failed the second round of the _Kobayashi Maru _so spectacularly, how would the third failure come? Would the entire mock bridge of the simulator burst into flame the third time? Would there be real deaths the third time?

Maybe that was why he wanted so desperately to try a third time to beat the sim. He didn't believe in no-win scenarios, even if they were just training simulations for hapless cadets. He owed it to Mitchell to make sure the next cadet in the navigation track didn't meet that same fate.

"_Give it up, Jim_," Bones had ordered yesterday afternoon when, after visiting Mitchell in Starfleet Medical's ICU upon being released himself, Jim had explained his need for a third try to the unsuspecting doctor-cadet. _"You'll get yourself killed the next time. Mitchell is still in critical condition. I don't think he'll regain full use of his right eye. That fire burned him pretty badly."_

Jim ruthlessly squashed that line of thought and ordered two apples and a cup of coffee from the replicator in his dorm room. He quickly pulled on his cadet red uniform and zipped the back of the boots, then grabbed the apples and coffee from the receiving tray in the replicator.

His roommate, Georg Andrekyovich, a second-year, cracked open one eye as the klaxon continued. "Good luck," the Ukrainian kid muttered sleepily. Jim hadn't told Andrekyovich about his spectacular second failure, but the kid was also friends with Mitchell, and moreover had probably wondered where Jim had been the last three days. He would have heard about it sooner or later, and his tone suggested that he'd already found out. "Meet you at dinner?" There was a tentative tone to his voice that not even his thick accent could hide; was Andrekyovich thinking that maybe the training simulation this morning would leave Jim, or others, in the same condition as Mitchell?

"Yeah," Jim said, stuffing an apple into his pocket and crunching down on the second fruit (he reminded himself that he really needed to put in a maintenance service request on the ancient replicator). Not wanting to meet Andrekyovich's eyes, he straightened his collar unnecessarily. "Meet you at dinner. Oh, and heads up-the replicator is mixing the flavours again."

He checked to make sure he had his comm and a PADD tucked into a zippered pocket (because the flight hangar destination meant a fairly lengthy trip, and if it was a Saturday morning Starfleet was using to stage a simulation, it meant at least two days away from the campus—how he was supposed to finish his report on Captain Archer by Monday was beyond him), then dashed out the door. The klaxon was alternating between the third-year cadet call to assemble and an emergency tone.

Yep, Jim thought as he rode the lift down to the ground floor of the dormitory, finishing the apple and making a face at the taste of rare beef that the replicator had somehow managed to insert into it, the only thing in the world that would assemble just the third-year cadets at the flight hangars would be a training sim. He grimaced, jogging through the foggy morning to the flight hangar. The third-year cadets would include Bones, and Bones was one unhappy man if he didn't get his morning coffee. Meanwhile, Jim downed his own coffee (which tasted like avocado—he really needed to submit that service request if that ancient replicator couldn't even get something simple like coffee and apples right). He was hoping that the coffee still contained enough caffeine to keep the Saurian Brandy from tap-dancing its way out of his head through his sinuses long enough so that he could actually think.

#

Jim met Leonard McCoy not far from the flight hangar. "Morning, Bones," Jim said sleepily, falling into lockstep with his friend.

"Morning," McCoy said, then got a good look at Jim's face and the telltale signs of not enough sleep. "Oh, don't tell me. You went and got drunk last night, not a full day after getting out of hospital. When will you grow up?"

"How was I supposed to know they'd spring a sim on us this early on a Saturday morning?" Jim whined. But in all honesty, he'd needed the distraction. He couldn't get the image of Gary Mitchell wrapped in bandages out of his head; the alcohol he'd consumed last night had helped with that. A little.

The caffeine _was_ starting to take the edge off the headache, despite the flavour of the coffee, but he still wished the migraine-level pain could instantly disappear. "Besides, Bones, you should have seen the _women _there. Did you know that an Eshari'i female has breasts so long she can-"

"Never mind, I get the picture," McCoy grumbled, and gulped what must have been his second canteen of coffee that morning. Jim smirked; McCoy likely had a headache just as bad as his, but from the lack of caffeine and not Saurian Brandy that had a stronger proof than the best Russian vodka. But McCoy had, as usual, managed to remember his emergency medical kit.

"Long shift at Starfleet Medical?"

"Don't ask," McCoy all but snarled. "That commander who recruited me back in Riverside wasn't kidding when she said that Starfleet needed trained medical officers. I'm just a lowly cadet and _still_ better qualified than half the doctors here. Head trauma patients at 0200 hours get old fast if Anderson is the only doctor on your floor. I swear, the guy is so incompetent it disrupts the entire cellular structure of the universe."

"Kirk, McCoy!" Pike's voice snapped. "Double-time it, you two, you're the last to arrive."

Jim jumped guiltily as Captain Christopher Pike emerged out of the fog in front of them. "Sorry, sir," he said quickly, crumpling his empty cup and tossing it into the nearest trash receptor. Good riddance to that awful coffee. He never had been a fan of avocados. Jim just hoped that the second apple stashed in his pocket was actually fruit-flavored. If it was flavored like plomeek soup, he might just puke on Bones and save himself the trouble of detoxing.

Pike took a closer look at Jim. "You okay after Tuesday's events?" Pike asked, concerned. Of course he would know what had happened in the simulator. He was the Commodore of Cadets. And Jim's academic advisor.

"I'm fine, sir," Jim said quickly.

"You just spent three and a half days in hospital," Pike said gently. "You sure you're up to this?"

"_I'm fine_," Jim said again, this time through gritted teeth. Wonderful—Pike had just confirmed that this would be a training simulation.

Pike gave him a long look, one he couldn't even begin to read with the Saurian Brandy addling his thoughts. Finally, Pike turned and led them to the hangar. McCoy gave Jim an equally unreadable look, which Jim ignored. He knew Pike had received a copy of the psych eval McCoy had written up on Wednesday after the worse of the burns had been patched up. Which McCoy had overseen.

Why was everyone treating him like he was made of glass? He had his skin back on in one piece with no Swiss cheese-style holes present, didn't he?

Jim and McCoy followed Pike into flight hangar one. A flurry of movement greeted them as the assembled cadets snapped quickly to attention. Jim and McCoy scurried to their own spots in the lineup.

"Welcome," Pike said, "to Flight Hangar One. This is the drop-off zone for your last group training simulation. In a few minutes you will all board shuttles. This training mission will take place on Earth's moon, at the utility base for the space station there, Alpha Base. We have been cleared to be there for 72 hours.

"This simulation is to directly test how well you each take command in a situation that might very well happen on a starship one day. In the absence of a bridge crew, for whatever reason, the chain of command is not always the best way to take charge of a ship without a captain. This simulation will test the resolve and leadership ability of each and every one of you.

"The scenario is as follows: You are crewmen on a space station. An explosion has killed off most of the senior officers who otherwise would have commanded you. There are civilians on board. There are people from other planets on board. There are children on board. There will be civil unrest; there will be plots against you by the civilians for the mere fact that you are Starfleet officers. Communications are down, so you have no way of contacting your fellow crewmen except face-to-face. Expect misunderstanding to occur. Expect mistakes to be made. And maybe, just maybe, one of your own is responsible for the explosion that took out your senior officers. The persons responsible could be one of you…..or is it just a malfunction? It is your job to find that out while at the same time ensuring that the civilians remain safe at all times. Medical cadets, you may either set up a triage station or accompany your assigned teams.

"The people on your shuttle will be your team. Work out your plans en route. Your comms have already been rendered inoperable, but maybe some of you will be able to patch something together."

Pike surveyed the assembled cadets slowly, making eye contact with each and every one.

"You will all be issued phasers permanently set to stun. This simulation begins…now.

"Report to the shuttles in your assigned formations. Good luck."

Pike stepped away from the podium.

Jim turned to McCoy. "Doesn't sound too bad," he said, cracking his knuckles. "By the way, you wouldn't have anything in your med kit for a hangover, would you?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Never did catch that first name," Jim drawled.

Uhura rolled her eyes. "Can it, Starfleet," she snapped. She checked the battery power levels on her phaser, and slapped it against the magnetic clip on her belt. "Everyone on board? Clear for takeoff?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jim said, still irritated that after three years all he knew of Uhura was her last name and that her first language was Swahili. "Who gave you permission to take over?"

Uhura glared. "You heard Pike. We're our own commanders this weekend. "

"Nuh-uh," Jim corrected. "We have to work together to find why the explosion occurred, not to mention reassuring the civilians. Don't come crying to me when you get your pretty little skirt dirty."

Charlie Johnson looked up from the pilot's seat. Jim swore the cadet was never out of the athletic training facility. "Cleared for take-off," Johnson said.

Jim grinned at McCoy and the other two cadets in the back of the shuttle. One, a human female named Jonna Larkin, wore the insignia buttons of a third-year cadet in the navigation track; the other, an Eshari'i male named SEl'kna, was in the anthropology & ancient civilizations track. That left Jim and Uhura for the command track, although at the rate Uhura soaked up languages, Jim was pretty sure she would be in Communications for whichever ship she was assigned to.

"Let's stick together on this one, yeah?" Jim said to the shuttle at large as Johnson fired up the engines. "Alpha Base is pretty big and we need backup if we're going to do this right."

* * *

The small group of cadets clustered around the bulkhead of the docking bay, phasers at the ready, waiting for their section of the bay to pressurize. Their shuttle had been among the last to arrive. Beyond the bulkhead, they could hear sounds of a firefight. McCoy cursed and leapt aside as a thin stream of phaser fire pushed its way through the crack of the door.

"I hope you managed to memorize plans for this place, Jim," McCoy hissed. "'Cause right now that's our only way out."

The main docking bay door opened its maw to let in another shuttle. "That's the last shuttle," Johnson noted.

"Terrific," Jim muttered. "We're sitting ducks, caught between a rock and a hard place."

"Not unless get we the arrivals new on our side," SEl'kna said. As usual, the universal translator was having problems with the verb conjugation and grammatical syntax of the Eshari'i language. "Have I friends on that shuttle."

Jim caught sight of one particularly hulking cadet amongst two husky female cadets—Ingrid Petersen and Erica Sullivan, both of whom had been in the simulator on Tuesday but had escaped the explosion with only light burns—and three males Jim didn't know. Jim recognized the large cadet as the cadet who'd given him the bloody nose in Riverside. "Great. Just great. SEl'kna, I hope you can work your magic on them. Because that big guy hasn't liked me since we met in a pub in Riverside."

SEl'kna tipped his head in acknowledgement and went to the docking bay doors. After a hushed conversation with the new arrivals, he turned to the others. "Have we their ally," SEl'kna announced. Jim was definitely going to have to make fixing the universal translator conjugation and syntax programming a top priority if he ever got his own ship. Getting the gist of what someone was trying to say could mean the difference between "I like you very much" and "Will you marry me because I love you so much?" Jim knew enough of alien language syntax that it was a fine line that the Starfleet officers walked if they relied just on the universal translator all the time.

"Okay, guys," Jim said. "Listen up. As soon as we get into the main part of the base, make for the commissary. Secure it and wait. Confiscate the weapons of all the cadets and civilians who enter it."

"Why the commissary, Cupcake?" Hefner drawled.

"It's one of the places everyone will need to go eventually," Jim replied, forcing himself to ignore Hefner's slur. "Or would you rather hole up in one of the restrooms?"

"Commissary is fine," Hefner muttered. Ingrid Petersen smirked.

"Good," Jim said. "We need another way into the base. Any ideas?"

"The air vent?" Uhura suggested. She pointed to the grate above the bulkhead.

Jim pursed his lips, thinking hard. They'd be able to just barely reach it by standing on each other's shoulders, but it meant that whoever was last had to go through the bulkhead door, not the air vent. Not to mention it was a pretty tight squeeze for a normal human. Hefner was huge, and there was no way he would fit through that tiny space. SEl'kna was going to have problems with his wings in that tight of a space, because if anything at all pained an Eshari'i's wings, it put the Eshari'i into shock so badly that it rendered the being mostly unmovable and otherwise useless. Now, if the Eshari'i wings could actually work like real wings, the air vent wouldn't pose that much of a problem. But the Eshari'i had nearly evolved out of being able to fly at all.

Despite the problems, in reality, the air vent was probably their only chance. But there went the idea that they were going to stick together.

Maybe somebody would have his back this weekend after all.

"Hefner, you and your bunch stay here with SEl'kna," Jim said finally. "Johnson, Larkin, you stay here, too. We'll need your help getting into the air vent, but otherwise it looks like it will be too tight for some of you. And all of us in there will be too many in a single air vent anyway. Sorry, guys. Wait here with Hefner's bunch until that firefight on the inside dies down and meet us in the commissary. Got it?"

"May I ask what will you do, Jim?" SEl'kna asked.

Jim smiled grimly. "What needs to be done," he replied. "Don't worry, SEl'k." He squatted down. "Uhura, get on my shoulders. You get to do the honors of opening the air vent. Bones, you're with us."

* * *

Jim winced as a muttered curse was snapped behind him. "Okay there, Bones?" he asked quietly.

"These damn rivets keep digging into my ribs!"

"I know," Jim replied. He could see another vent ahead of them, and through it the light from another fire fight. Damn it, hadn't the cadets listened to Pike when he told them that their job was to stay alive? Fire fights just didn't fall under that category, and he didn't care that the phasers were on stun—it was still as good as killing someone in this simulation! "I think we're nearly there. Let's hold up for a minute." He rolled up against the wall of the air shaft as much as he could so he could extract his comm unit from his uniform pocket. Consulting the map of the base he'd been able to find, he groaned. Damn it. He'd thought they were closer. "Two more vents to go, then hang a left, and the commissary vent should be the vent at the end of that shaft," Jim said. "Uhura, you okay up there?" He could practically hear her eyes rolling.

"Yes, Kirk," she snapped, glaring over her shoulder at him, then swore heavily in Swahili when she whacked her head on a beam in front of her.

* * *

They were finally at the commissary vent. Uhura crawled ahead to give Jim space to observe the room. A handful of civilians were in there: An Elenari and her youngling, two Tellerites, three Andorians.

"What's the holdup?" McCoy hissed.

"There are people in the commissary," Jim whispered back.

"Come on, hurry up with that vent," Uhura complained quietly. "You weren't kidding when you said it was going to be a tight squeeze in here."

Jim took a deep breath. "Scoot forward a bit, Uhura." Once he had enough room, Jim rolled onto his back, braced himself with his arms, and gave the vent grate a solid kick. It crashed into the room below and he quickly dropped down into the commissary after it. McCoy and Uhura followed him, only to find that Jim already had his hands full with the civilians.

The Andorians and Tellerites Jim could handle, no matter how much the Andorians despised the Terrans and no matter how much the Tellerites wanted to argue. But the Elenari were one of the telepathic races of the Federation species. Except, their mind skills included telekinesis.

There was a lot of debate by Federation scientists as to exactly how the Elenari did it, and even the anthropologists who had studied them were heavily insulted by other scientists for not using proper study methods. Jim remembered reading a paper by an anthropologist who had done the most detailed study to date. She had claimed that in some Elenari, the ability was latent; that is, it required almost no tutorial by the individual to wield the ability. Others could be taught it, and still others couldn't use it at all. However they did it, the Elenari called their people with this ability Mages, ad Jim had already found out that at least one of the Elenari in Alpha Base's commissary was a Mage. He was placing his bets on the mother.

Trying to breathe around the invisible hand choking him, Jim gasped out the formal greeting of the Elenari he had learned from SEl'kna: "By the name of the Mother Sun I greet thee and bid thee welcome!" He waited tensely, trying to breathe and hoping the damn universal translator was still working after the beating it had taken during the trip to the commissary.

Meanwhile, Uhura and Bones were watching with bated breaths. Jim could tell that Bones was torn between staying out of the situation and trying to help his best friend.

The Elenari female, on the other hand, still held Jim in her invisible grip. "When we came here," she sneered, her deep voice dripping with loathing, "we were not informed that we would be unwilling participants in a … training drill." Jim gasped for breath, scrabbling his hands against the unseen bonds around his throat.

Finally, Bones spoke up. "Dammit, woman, you're killing him!"

She let Jim go; he stumbled against the wall, drawing in shaking breaths.

"Forgive my impulsiveness, sir," she said, bowing slightly. "My people are not used to freedom."

Jim looked up, sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Many of your centuries have passed," the Elenari said, "and yet my people still live under the laws set by the Usurper. Those who would have saved us have been labeled as war criminals." She held up a bronze hand at their protests. "On my world, any involvement at all in a war is terms for automatic punishment. The Usurper broke our world, killed our people. That was one and a half thousand years ago. My people have not yet recovered from his tyranny."

"I'm sorry," Jim said automatically. "Look," he said, taking a wild gamble and running with it, "I know you have a lot of emotional baggage. We have a job to do. Are you willing to help us?"

After a long moment in which the Elenari locked eyes with every one of them, she finally consented with a slight nod. "I am Nelk'knah."

"Jim Kirk."

"Leonard McCoy."

"Uhura."

"May I ask why you chose to come here, when your classmates are elsewhere?" Nelk'knah asked.

Jim bit his lip. Obviously the civilians had been briefed on the situation. "Pike—the Commodore of Cadets—said we had to regain control of the station, stay alive ourselves, and try to find out why the explosion occurred. The commissary is the one place everyone has to come eventually. If we can confiscate weapons and hold everyone here, we might stand a better chance of solving the problem as opposed to just killing everyone in sight. It was easier to get here without problems if we came through the air vent.

"We left some people in the docking bay," Jim continued. "They're meeting us here. With any luck they'll be here shortly."

"So we just sit tight and wait for folks to show up?" Bones demanded.

"That's the general idea," Jim quipped. "Unless you'd rather go out there with guns blazing?"

Bones winced. "I'll take my chances in here."

"Pink-skinned cowards," one of the Andorians muttered. "'Cowardice in battle leads naught to greatness.'"

"_Cowardice_," Jim snapped, rounding on the Andorian, "is what's going to save all our asses right now. So shut up, or get the hell out."

"Jim, you're threatening a _civilian_!" Uhura hissed.

"And if we all insist on arguing for an hour over the details, we're never going to get anything done!" Jim said, rounding on her. "_Think_! This is exactly what Pike said! He said that the civilians would try to hinder us. If we can't handle civilians, how the hell are we supposed to handle a starship crew?"

He glared at everyone in the room. "If you don't want to be here, there's the door. But in the end, this is going to be the safest room on Alpha Base. You have thirty seconds to make your decision."

The Andorian stared at him, and finally laughed. "A strong cadet," he smirked. "But Starfleet's finest? Hardly." But he and his companions sat down. Jim turned his attention to the problem of the communicator, and barely noticed when the Elenari child cautiously approached the group of cadets.

* * *

Jim sighed and glanced yet again at the commissary's chronometer. Two hours, and nobody had shown up yet. Uhura had struck up a friendship with the Elenari child, and was now talking to both the Elenari and recording their native language.

The Tellerites and Andorians were off in their own little groups, doing their best to ignore the cadets. Still, they kept eying them suspiciously. Jim was busy alternating between trying to make their communicators work and watching the Alpha Base security camera footage he'd managed to hack into on his PADD.

A group of cadets held the rec room on H Deck, assisted by five civilians. Things were relatively calm for them.

Three cadets were in the same wing as the commissary Jim, McCoy, and Uhura were holed up in.

Two cadets had just encountered another, larger group of cadets by the main doors to the engineering section. Five cadets in the larger group went down under the phaser fire.

It was like that all over Alpha Base. Handfuls of cadets here and there, no real purpose discerned from any of them. Jim groaned in frustration. Hadn't any of them listened to Pike? They were supposed to work together, dammit, not turn Alpha Base into a war zone!

Yet …. Jim wondered if staying in the commissary and holding it in safety was even a good idea with how spread out the other cadets were. What if the Andorian had been right, quoting that proverb about cowardice? _Was_ it cowardice that kept him in relative safety in the commissary and not out there fighting? Was it a will to last as long as he could in this simulation?

Was it a desire to keep the flashbacks from Tuesday's fiasco in the Kobayashi Maru simulation from controlling him?

And then the commissary door slid open, four hours after Jim Kirk had entered the Alpha Base simulation.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

This is short-sorry! The storyline wouldn't flow properly otherwise. I'll make up for this short chapter with a long chapter 4.

* * *

Finally, finally, _finally_, some action. The three cadets—two males and a female—who edged cautiously around the door were certainly not any of the group Jim had left behind with SEl'kna in the docking bay. Bones and Uhura immediately had their phasers trained on the cadets in seconds. Before Jim's brain processed what he was doing, he was on his feet and advancing toward the three cadets, his own phaser trained on them. "Drop your weapons!" Jim heard himself bark out. The cadets jumped, and quickly complied. Jim jerked his head; Uhura scrambled to collect the phasers while Jim and Bones kept the cadets under guard.

"Have a seat, fellas," Jim invited, not lowering his phaser. "Might as well get comfy; we'll be here a while."

It was gonna be a long weekend if the cadets trickled into the commissary one by one. Maybe they could rely on Nelk'knah to help coerce the others to the commissary so they could get to the rub of the problem?

Pushing that thought aside, Jim sat down at the same table as the newcomers. Luckily this commissary was big—he estimated it was large enough to hold nearly everyone who normally staffed Alpha Base. Hopefully that would be enough to hold everyone currently in Alpha Base.

"So," Jim began. He didn't miss the new positions Bones and Uhura had taken up at two of the tables: They were in the corners directly opposite the doorway. From there, they couldn't be surprised from behind and yet they had the door covered from two directions. And, they could help Jim if something went pear-shaped. "What's the situation out there?"

The cadets looked nervously at each other.

"Corin is holed up in the rec room on K Deck with a few civilians and three cadets," the female cadet said finally. "She's already taken out maybe ten cadets."

The younger male added, "Johnson and SEl'kna were trying to negotiate with two other cadets on B Deck by the lift to the docking bay."

"How many were with them?" Jim asked quickly.

"Um...six."

If only he could get the damn communicator working! Then he could contact Johnson and SEl'kna and tell them to start rounding up cadets and getting them to the commissary. It would be better than taking a black mark from the Starfleet commanders he was certain were watching the sim footage. These three could be of use in the commissary, and Nelk'knah could help, considering that she was an Elenari Mage.

"Nelk'knah, I need your help," Jim said finally. The Elenari rose and came over to the table, sat down next to the female cadet. "Are your people still vilified if you participate in war games?"

"If it is a game our consciences are cleared of any wrongdoing."

_Consciences? _ He thought he knew the Federation species better than this.

Luckily, Nelk'knah had seen his hesitation. "Mine is a culture in which reincarnation is not a myth. Our minds regenerate many times, in many different bodies. If we commit a conscience-crime and are condemned for it, even years after the host body which committed it is dead, we can still be deemed responsible for what happened."

"That's…." Jim coughed awkwardly, not knowing how he should respond to a statement like that. "Um," he tried again, "that's ….. interesting." He sighed. "Look, we need to do more than just sit tight in here this weekend. Pike said that we had to work together to figure out what had caused the explosion. _Nobody_ is doing that. Think you could help us round them all up?"

Nelk'knah pursed her lips, or at any rate, pursed what passed for lips on an Elenari. "The girl-child is adept at mind coercion." Her youngling scampered over and burrowed under her mother's arm. "Shirrrrah would be able to accomplish what you need."

"Great!" Jim said. "Okay, here's the plan. Bones and Uhura, you two stay here with the others. I'm going to take Shirrrrah and Nelk'knah and see about getting things under control out there."

"I'm going with you," Uhura said suddenly.

"Don't be ridiculo—" Jim started, but Uhura cut him off.

"There are a few cadets here who don't speak a word of Standard, and what about all the civilians?" Uhura pointed out. "What if you lose your universal translator, or if it can't translate an alien language for you? Where would you be then? Face it, Kirk, you need me out there."

"And I need you in here," Jim said through gritted teeth. "I'm not leaving Bones in here alone. We don't know who we can trust yet. "

The Andorian who had spoken earlier rose angrily from his chair. "Mind your tongue, Pink-Skin!" he spat.

"He was talking about us!" the other female cadet said quickly. "Weren't you?"

Jim flicked his eyes down at her briefly before meeting the Andorian's glare again. "Yeah. I was talking about the cadets. Not you."

The Andorian glared and gave a sound of disbelief, but sat down.

"Uhura, please, just stay here with Bones, yeah?" Jim said quietly. "I'll be back before you know it."

"What do you want us to do?" the female cadet asked. "Connor Jenkins is pretty good with engineering and I'm fair at languages. Mitchel Stanley's in the security track."

"What's your name?" Jim asked. At least now he knew who the other two were.

"Jenna Mills."

"All right," Jim said, "Jenna, you come with us, but you don't get a phaser. Okay?" Mills nodded.

To Uhura he said quietly: "Try to get communications back online. Pike hinted as much in the briefing."

Aloud, he said, "Let's go do this, Nelk'knah."


End file.
